John Barth

Highlights from the Archives

In the middle of the middle story in John Barth's new collection of novellas, the "capital-A Author" - who is not the same as the capital-N Narrator and also not necessarily Barth - begins to suffer from self-doubt: does anyone actually enjoy reading this sort of thing? "Who wouldn't rather read a straight-on story-story, involving colorful characters doing interesting things in a 'dramatic' situation, instead of yet another peekaboo story-about-storying?"

In his new -- and, he playfully suggests, possibly his last -- novel, John Barth seems to be returning the favor of acknowledgment to all the ambitious young writers who've followed in his experimental wake.

As a character in one of these stories observes: "More than Freudian psychology, more than Marxist ideology, quantum mechanics has been the Great Attractor of the second half of this dying century -- even though, speaking generally, almost none of us knows beans about it." Considering Mr. Barth's distinguished record as an experimental fiction writer, one should not be surprised that these stories are also highly aware of the new physical realities.

John Barth has been producing fiction for more than 30 years (his first book, ''The Floating Opera,'' appeared in 1956), but there is astonishingly little agreement about the value of what he has given us. A good case could be made - and some have made it - that, possibly excepting Thomas Pynchon or Robert Coover, he is our most ingenious practitioner of what Richard Poirier once termed the literature of self-parody.

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April 4, 2004, Sunday

''I think that to understand any one thing entirely, no matter how minute, requires the understanding of every other thing in the world,'' wrote the author John Barth in ''The Floating Opera.'' Mr. Barth, a National Book Award winner, will be reading...

April 28, 2002, Sunday

To the Editor: I have to respectfully disagree with Jennifer Schuessler's assessment of my former colleague John Barth's novel ''Coming Soon!!!'' (Nov. 4). I found it fast, funny, clever, spirited and engrossing from beginning to end. I still...

December 2, 2001, Sunday

To the Editor: Regarding John Barth's novel ''Coming Soon!!!'' (???): I am writing a letter about writing letters to be read by letter readers who read about letter writers writing letters to readers of letters. I believe that this practice...

November 4, 2001, Sunday

NEWS Passion Can't get enough of tango? It's back, in the music of Astor Piazzolla and the violin of Gidon Kremer, his Kremerata Musica and vocalists in a concert version of Piazzolla's only opera, ''Maria de Buenos Aires,'' with lyrics by the...

ON WITH THE STORY Stories By John Barth 257 pages. Little, Brown & Company. $23.95. In "Ad Infinitum: A Short Story" -- the second of the dozen fictions in John Barth's fascinating new collection, "On With the Story" -- a husband weeds his...

July 11, 1996, Thursday

To the Editor: There is much to object to in Jonathan Raban's review of John Barth's latest novel, "The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor" (Feb. 3). But perhaps his most obvious effort to discredit Mr. Barth's book, and to do some extra damage...